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Western culture is immersed in the concept of the monotheistic religions of Christianity and Judaism. The casual reader may not be aware of different alternatives. So a major issue to be presented is how the "archaic truths which are the basis of all religions" offer a third alternative to these theistic religions.

The idea of a God outside the cosmos who creates it - with omniscience and omnipotence - is not the grandest metaphysical conception. The question may be expressed, what is the highest cosmic ultimate in a given metaphysics. In standard Christianity it is God. In the archaic traditions is a nameless reality that is beyond all description and all expressions of words. Imagine the most abstract abstraction we can imagine. It is beyond that.

In a key passage it is "described" as

An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of thought. (SDi14)

In English it is called the Absolute.

In my experience, people find her continuation helpful:

and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude.

So if we describe it we dwarf it. It is said that the most advanced seers sense it.

The phrase "Neti, neti" means not "not that, not that". It refers to a teaching device in which the student is told to reach for some grand abstraction. Once the student has imagined that abstraction the student is told "not that, not that."

There is a vast difference between this cosmic metaphysical ultimate and a "God". The God of the Bible, in contrast, displays jealousy, rage and sorrow.

I mention this under "archaic truths" because it is such. We see it very clearly under Hinduism. We see it in the Hebrew Kabalah as Ainsoph (literally translated as "nothing.") It can be found in Buddhism though that engenders a discussion beyond our scope at the moment. It is believed in today by 100,000,000 Chinese (or more?) Interestingly a similar idea appears in the German Christian concept of "Gottheit". And this idea is routinely found in the mystic traditions of the world.

On the basis of this Absolute alone, Theosophy - the ancient wisdom as represented by Blavatsky - is a third alternative that contrasts to the Gods of theistic religions.

Written by Reed Wood Carson, founder of Blavatky Net and Theosophy Foundation of Georgia